[1] Planché wrote his first play in 1816, Amoroso, King of Little Britain, a work intended to be performed at small private theatres amongst novices and growing artists.
Two years later, Planché's play received considerable recognition from a popular comedian at the time, a John Pritt Harley, whom staged his work at the Drury Lane Theatre on 21 April 1818.
At the time of its debut and critically acclaimed success, Planché was invited to the green room at Drury Lane where he was complimented for Amoroso, King of Little Britain’s well-admired performances, and was persuaded by John Harley and actor-managers Stephen Kemble & Robert William Elliston to pursue a career in playwriting.
It was during this time in Planché’s career where he developed a strong interest in antiquarian practice, especially in regard to historical accuracy and the dramaturgy of a play’s origins.
[3] Samuel Arnold had presented Charles Nodler’s Le Vampire to Planché in hopes for an adaption that he could put on the London stage at the Lyceum English Opera House.
The French melodrama was converted into an opera for the German stage, in which Planché “wrote the libretto, laid the scene of action in Hungary, where the superstition exists to this day, and in many other respects improved upon my earlier version.” He points out specifically that “the opera was extremely well sung, and the costumes novel as well as correct.”[4] The play begins in the Cave of Fingal on the Island of Staffa, in Scotland.
The next scene takes place in Lord Ronald's castle, where his workers are drinking and discussing Lady Margaret's disappearance and return.
Roaming the hills often as a reanimated peasant, seeking the hot throbbing blood of the human being, this creature was hardly an attractive entity to its victims.
Upon its initial premiere on the London stage at the Lyceum Theatre on 19 August 1820, J.R. Planche's gothic play, The Vampire existed as the first presentation of this acrimonious being as one who possessed great charm and elegance.
The novel persona of eloquent sophistication concealing the repugnant demon inside served as the incitement for the image of the modern day vampire.
Other innovative elements (such as the location of the play and technological advancements of stage machinery) aided in the creation of this new personage through J.R. Planche's new vision of Gothic literature.
[9] Planche then adapted Polidori's character and in a theatrical innovation, made him walk the histrionic boards cloaked in the noble façade of Lord Ruthven emerging from the grotesque form the European myth had formerly placed on him.
[10] On the intrigue of invention to increase this spectacle, Planche created a stage mechanism which was fostered out of his own desire to have a trap-door in the Lyceum Theatre.